The Journal: A BlackDad Short Story (Part 1)

It was July, 2010. That summer, my daughter was preparing to move to Baltimore with her mother, who had recently married a brother living there. Being the dutiful father and Muslim, I helped my ex pack and straighten the apartment for their departure. As I was gathering up Umarah’s things, I came across as small, girly-pink notebook labeled, “JOURNAL”.

I’ve said it before – as a father, when it comes to kids, I am nosy. Unapologetically. I don’t subscribe to Leave-It-To-Beaver notions of parenting. Being a step/father to girls made me super vigilant, super protective. And super nosy. Sue me – and good luck.

All that, of course, is to say, I opened and thumbed thru Umarah’s journal. What I read ripped my soul out and tied it in a knot.

First, some context. A month prior, Umarah’s mom took a trip out to Baltimore to visit friends and meet her prospective husband, leaving Umarah, 15 at the time, at home alone. The turmoil in my own marriage precluded my snatching up my daughter and having her home with me while her mother was out of town. In fact, at the time, I was in jail, fighting a preposterous case involving my then-wife – a story that will have to wait for another time – imminent.

The journal began at this point – Umarah was home alone, and reveling in the freedom and lack of supervision, she invited a boy from school that she had a major crush on to the apartment. What followed was a literary account, at my daughter’s hand, of a date-rape. My daughter’s rape.

I read as my kid tried to stop the make-out session that ensued. Read as her crush held her down and forced himself on her and stole her virginity, and then left in stoic silence.

I sat in that same type of silence when I was done reading. Seven pages. Double-spaced, with the neatest of handwriting. Judy Blume herself could not have written better than this. But the author was not Judy, she was my own progeny.

I sat, and an overwhelming spectre of failure approached and embraced me – hard, like the angel Gabriel did to Muhammad in the cave that very first night of his prophethood. Failure whispered softly to me. My truest fear was alive, talking to me. I had been charged by God and the Universe with protecting my kid from every type of monster, and I had failed.

I was nothing, the whispers said. I was, as I feared - and as I told myself in the deepest recesses of my heart - the worst father ever. Better yet, perhaps I wasn’t even really an actual father. Perhaps I was merely a pretender; a fraud.

For all my bravado, my posturing, my declarations, my “walk”, I was helpless and inept - I had allowed my daughter to fall victim to the worst crime a girl could ever experience.

Soon, failure stopped talking, drowned out by a new, more urgent voice with a tighter, more painful hug:

Anger.

I was going to find this crush of hers - her rapist, no less. And he (and payback) was not going to be hard to find.

(To Be Continued)